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Definition and Utilization of Among Hosts Heritable Variation in Reproduction Ratio R0 for Infectious Diseases

Abstract

Objective of this study was to show that an individual’s breeding value for basic reproduction ratio, R0 is a function of its own allele frequencies for susceptibility and infectivity and of population average susceptibility and infectivity. When interacting group mates are unrelated, selection for individual disease status captures heritable variation in susceptibility only, yielding limited response in R0. With related group mates, however, selection also captures heritable variation in infectivity and additional variation in susceptibility, yielding substantial response in R0. This shows that also genetic variation in susceptibility represents an Indirect Genetic Effect. Furthermore, a Generalized Linear Model (GLM) with complementary log-log link function applied to final size from simulated data was developed to estimate relative gene effects for susceptibility and infectivity..